Frank Barkow | Barkow Leibinger

STICKS AND STONES

In our practice, experimentation revolves around the belief that invention, discovery, and imagination are best triggered by the physical making of things; they, in turn, tell you what to do, tell you what they are. Experimentation also revolves around our belief that architecture can generate its own forms of knowledge and expertise: that architecture can only evolve by challenging the status quo, seeking new methods of production, transforming materials, and developing techniques for space-making. Experimentation is a process of trial and error, failure and success, that needs its own space, one independent from the day-to-day demands of deadlines, budgets, and baseline pragmaticism.

ABOUT FRANK BARKOW

Frank Barkow was born in Kansas City, USA, in 1957. He received his master‘s degree in architecture from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, in 1990, and a bachelor‘s degree from Montana State University, Bozeman, USA, in 1982. Since 1993 he has been leading the architectural practice Barkow Leibinger in Berlin together with Regine Leibinger. Frank Barkow is a design and research leader in the practice and a committed academic.

He has been teaching continuously at Princeton University, School of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, the Architectural Association and the Royal College of Art in London, EPFL École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart, among others. After visiting professorships in 1990-1992 and 2003 at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in Ithaca, New York, USA, he was again
appointed by the college as Gensler Visiting Critic in 2021.

In 2018, he was a member of the International Jury of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy, directed by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara.